Hobnobbing with the chickadees

The chickadees in my neighborhood park are well-acquainted with my habit of carrying sunflower seeds in the pocket of my jacket, a fact that brings them flying when they see me tramping down the trail. Yesterday I actually had one land on my hat, but usually they just light on a tree branch or bush nearby, hoping that I have brought them a treat.

Today I had a different kind of chickadee experience. It seems that chickadees are attracted by the song of the Carolina wren. A photographer friend told me she had seen the wrens recently in the area around the evergreen trees, so I headed down that trail. Not seeing any, I got out my phone, opened the iBird app, and played the Carolina wren song. I hoped to see a wren appear among the evergreens, but what appeared instead were, you guessed it, chickadees, and they posed quite willingly on the branches of the evergreen trees.

Unfortunately, as the sun was shining brilliantly (a novelty for March here on the south shore of Lake Erie) and the chickadees had perched on the dark evergreen trees, the camera metered for the dark green trees and completely blew out the white feathers on the chickadees, a fact I didn’t realize it until I saw the pictures on my computer. So today I am sharing with you this picture, one of only two that were salvageable from the 10 or so that I shot today. Lesson learned…and shared with my “blog buddies.”